Last-mile delivery is its own market. On January 21, 2025, Montero USA was granted US12202627B2, “Method of space transportation using a distributed network of space tugs,” classified in B64G 1/2427 with logistics ties in B64G 4/00. The claim describes a network of tug vehicles moving payloads between orbits. Montero is a private firm; the case lives in the patent and public record.
Rockets are efficient at reaching a standard drop-off orbit but expensive at precise final placement. That leaves a gap: satellites often need to move from where the launch leaves them to a specific operational orbit. Filling that gap — orbital last-mile delivery — is a transportation business distinct from launch, with its own customers who will pay to have their payload tugged to its destination rather than burn their own propellant getting there.
For a capital-markets reader, the distributed-network framing is the interesting part. A single tug is a mission; a network of reusable tugs positioned across orbits is a logistics service — capable of serving many customers on demand, amortizing each vehicle across repeated jobs. That network structure is what could turn orbital transfer from a bespoke service into a scalable, recurring transportation market.
The honest caveat: orbital logistics is an emerging, capital-intensive market, and a network patent describes an architecture, not a funded, deployed fleet. Demand for last-mile delivery at the implied scale is still being proven.
But the patent names a real and distinct opportunity. Launch gets payloads to orbit; logistics gets them where they need to be — and a space-tug-network patent is an architecture for selling that last mile as a service.